The Great Palauan Baseball Fail

Through most of my life I’ve played sports. My main sport over the years has been ice hockey but I’ve also played a bunch of other sports everything from breach volleyball to squash to cricket to baseball. When Amanda and I started looking at moving to Palau I went searching to see what sports they played. I wanted to keep up some activity and was hoping they had something I’d be interested in. Unsurprisingly they don’t have an ice rink however it turns out Baseball is their national sport. Brilliant I thought, I can get involved, meet some people, keep active etc etc. Perfect!

After arriving here in June last year I quickly found out I needed to go visit the Palauan Olympic Committee office. I met the guy who runs Baseball and was told the final series for the current season was starting that night and there wouldn’t be another season for 6 months (starting January). BUGGER!

I was told I could come watch the finals and they would coincide with the national Belau games (state vs state comp) which baseball was a part of. In typical Palauan fashion I had to ask question after question to get details on what time the games where on, if anyone trained over the off-season, when the next season started etc etc. Eventually after asking enough questions I was told I could join the Peleliu teams training session prior to their Belau games campaign. 

As I mentioned in early blog posts I watched a number of games and enjoyed my training session despite it being rather unorganised. 

Skip down a few months to December and I started contacting the Baseball organiser to find out when the new season started and if I could train with anyone. Of course the information forthcoming was poor, the extent of the information I got was that the season was due to start in January still and I’d be contacted closer to the date.

Skip to January, again the same details. No one is training, season is due to start in January some time and the guy would contact me when the season was organised.

So around late January I get fed up waiting and go into the office again. The season has now been delayed due to the weather hampering the re-building of the pitcher’s mound and it may be a shortened season due to Micronesian games around mid-year. The good news was that apparently now it might be possible for me to join the Palau Community College team’s training and he’d put me in a team from the Ngechebed area. 

A few more weeks later and finally after contacting the guy yet again I’m told I can indeed join the PCC training session. I got to one session which was fairly well run and despite having a sore shoulder for a few days I enjoyed getting back out there again. What I found out though was that they had been training since September and I could have joined them way back then! The coach seemed very disappointed with the organisation of the league over the last 5-8 years and they had even boycotted the last few seasons because of it. I was invited to join the PCC team for future trainings however over the next two weeks it inconveniently rained each day that training was scheduled. 

Finally somewhere around the start of March we get a fine day for training. I head to the field only to find two teams in full uniform warming up for what is clearly a league game. With no communications the season has started without me. I immediately sms the bloke in charge… of course I receive no reply ( I would have called him but I had almost run out of phone credit, I tried to buy more that night but found two stores in a row had run out *SIGH*). So I call the guy the next day and got some long winded story about how he’s trying to put me on a team (maybe the PCC team now) and he’d get back to me. Again I never heard back from him. I went down to the field for the next game and low and behold the PCC team are playing. I had a quick chat to the coach who said he’d talk to the organiser and get him to call me back. It’s been about 1.5 weeks since and no further communication­s have been forthcoming. 

With the season starting late and apparently ending early and with our Japan trip starting this week I’ve given up on playing this year.

If you can’t tell I’m rather pissed off and extremely frustrated. All I wanted to do was play some social baseball, it’s not that f#%king hard is it? I know another 4 whiteys on island that wanted to play as well. Somehow due to the complete lack of communication and organisation they’ve only managed 4 teams. Although each team has about 15 players! There could be a league with 8 teams if they’ve only worked their shit out.  

So now not only am I regretting the effort I’m gone to in attempting to play but I’m also regretting bringing over my glove, cleats, uniform and recently buying new batting gloves and a training bat. What a waste. Thanks very much Palau.